Original art, new works made by tattooists for the exhibition and photography and film aim to show life as a London tattoo artist in the new Museum of London show

The origins of tattooing, at least in London, are often linked to Captain Cook’s voyages to the other side of the world, when he returned with talk of Tahitian tattooed savages. "That's a very persistent myth, but it simply isn't true," points out Dr Matt Lodder, an art historian and tattoo expert who says the story has been one of constance rather than "neglect and rediscovery" since then.

"Captain Cook categorically did not bring tattooing to England. Tattooing has been present back to the 16th century and likely before." Further afield, in prehistory, the bodies of Egyptian figurines were used as funereal canvases, and then the practice spread into Asia, frequently being linked to skin branding and criminality, which it also had associations with when the art began to flourish in 19th century England.

“Tattooing in London, certainly from the kind of professional era
onwards, never really got stigmatised in the same way as it was
elsewhere,” observes Dr Lodder.

“And so London becomes this kind of really important hub, bringing
influences from all over the world, from America from Japan, and turning
them into something that’s very particular about this city. London has
been this real cauldron of tattoo culture and the story of that is not
that tattooing was once one thing and is now something else. It’s always
been this sort of strange, beautiful and romantic, weird, wonderful
medium.”

The Museum of London has formed a needle-whirring alliance with four of the city’s tattoo studios - New Wave, Into You, Seven Doors and The Family Business all reflect the diversity of the business, as well as its relative ubiquity compared to the first practitioners of the 1880s - for an exhibition about “people turning up, buying a tattoo as a commodity”, according to Lodder.

At New Wave, Lal Hardy is into his fifth decade as a tattooist. He is,
by his own definition, a press favourite (most recently the Daily Mail
and Timeout). But he considers all his clients as important as the
footballers from his beloved Spurs who have called upon his services,
not to mention a few players from Arsenal and elsewhere.

Hardy put Jen Kavanagh, the exhibition’s curator, in touch with Lodder, who works from the University of Essex. “That led me to speaking to Claudia De Sabe, who works at Seven Doors,” says Kavanagh.

“That’s the newest of the studios that we represent in the project – it
only opened in 2014. When I first started we did a little bit of
research to identify who the most historic studios in London were, who
was still operating having been quite well established.

“Through those conversations, it almost became a chronology of
tattoo studios in London. Each of the artists is showing tattooing of
clients, which is very up-close and personal but is also a really
interesting insight.

“This exhibition is a really nice way to be able to celebrate their
amazing work. It’s the scale of the industry today which is just so
significant.”

Alex Binnie, who Kavanagh initially contacted, established Into You in 1993. He got his first tattoos around the same time Hardy was starting out, began giving them to others from a central London squat, and moved to the then-more-happening Los Angeles, also working with Ron Athey, the Pentecostal-raised performance artist who lets audiences watch a metal hook penetrate his scalp and saline solution circumvent his scrotum.

When Binnie returned, he made Into You one of the first tattoo shops in
London where you could order a custom design. More recently he’s made
woodcuts inspired by the woodblock prints of Japanese tattooing, as well
as becoming a printmaker - a typically dextrous artist whose skill
shouldn’t be hidden in studios and beneath clothes, says Lodder.

“It’s really kind of important that museums like this one are taking tattoo practice – and actually popular culture of all kinds – seriously. To put this stuff in a place where it’s going to be looked after and kept is really heartwarming,” he feels.

“When you see these images on there and they’re in a row and we move
from the 19th century to the present day, I think hopefully that will
shift people’s perception. It is a real pleasure for me as a historian
to have been able to help these four incredible artists to tell their
stories.”

Tattoo London runs from January 29 - May 8 2016. Visit tattoohistorian.com for more on the history of tattoos.

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